I had gone to Riverside Park because my therapist told me to walk somewhere with noise, somewhere I could remember I was home, but the crowd blurred the moment I saw the amber eyes watching me from the dust. He was half the size he used to be, all ribs and matted fur, with a frayed rope tied to a collar so worn the leather had cracked white at the edges.
I said his name before I meant to. “Rocky Bennett.”
The dog lifted his head one inch, and his tail tapped the dirt twice, weak but certain. My knees went out from under me so fast that a woman pushing a stroller stopped in the path, and for a second I was back in a village overseas, hearing him growl through smoke while he dragged me behind a wall I never would have reached alone.
An old man on the bench tightened his hand around the rope and stepped between us. His name was Earl, and he looked like a man who had already lost too many arguments with the world.
